Feb. 25, 2002
Please feel free to invite some of your colleagues from your or another
city/county if you think it would benefit them to be part of our group!
Attendance
Rich Lovett, KCMO
Susan Waters, Overland Park
Randy Ellis, Overland Park
Sonya Fendorf, Shawnee
Kevin Whelan, Johnson County
Desiree Garcia, Miami County
Danny Rotert, MARC
Lynn Kring, U.S. HUD
KU Class on Infrastructure to Study Area Web Sites
Dean Katerndahl from MARC stopped by to let us know about a project
being worked on by some KU students. A class that is studying infrastructure will do a study on Web sites in the
metro area, mainly all of ours.
Students will look for accessibility compliance, usability, best practices, e-gov examples, etc. They will offer
their findings and suggestions in a session on Wed. May 8 at 2:30 p.m. at the MARC offices.
If you have questions, please contact Dean at deank@marc.org.
Roundtable Discussion
We started with a discussion on Web statistics programs. Rich
passed out a handout for Analog 5.1 (http://www.analog.cx), a free web statistics program. It uses data from your log files to produce
reports. Miami Co. currently uses this program.
Johnson Co. uses a product called LiveStats, which lets you view data in real time (http://www.deepmetrix.com/livestats).
This program costs about $700.
One of the more popular programs, WebTrends (http://www.webtrends.com), is used by the cities of Overland Park and Kansas City, Mo. It is more expensive
than some of the other programs out there.
Another program mentioned was HitBox (http://www.websidestory.com), which shows results very quickly. You need to put code on all pages and pricing
is monthly, based on page views.
Atomz (http://www.atomz.com), the free search engine used by MARC, also produces some site statistics.
We also briefly discussed domain names and the .gov and .us controversies.
Sonya Fendorf, Shawnee, is looking for any policies you may have about departments buying/managing their own domain
names and doing their own thing. Send them to her, or better yet, over the listserv at webmasters@lyris.marc.org.
Desiree Garcia, Miami Co., brought up Internet Use Policies. The county already has a policy, but some department
managers want it beefed up or modified to fit their unique management style. Is it an IT or departmental issue
whether employees are using the Web for personal use? If you have any advice or policies, send them over the listserv.
If you have any other policies or documents that may be of interest to the group, please send them over the listserv.
They will also be placed on our Web site, http://www.kcmagweb.org/.
Next Meeting: Usability Studies/BCentral Demo
Our next meeting will be held at 9 a.m. on March 18 at the MARC offices. We will discuss usability studies with
the help of Kevin Whelan, Johnson Co.
Also, Susan Waters will do a brief demonstration with BCentral, a Web service that manages e-mail addresses and
helps you distribute e-mail messages/newsletters.
If you have any ideas for future topics or guest speakers, please share them with Rich Lovett, KCMO, (rlovett@kcmo.org) or Susan Waters, Overland Park (sjwaters@opkansas.org).
SJW